Политика Европейского союза в области безопасности и обороны

Abstract

The article "The European Union Security and Defence Policy" deals with two European Union's approaches towards the unified foreign policy and security. The promising areas for collective action are the OSCE process, disarmament and arms control in Europe, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, control of arms technology transfer to third countries and arms export control. This qualitatively new approach which is reflected in the Maastricht Treaty concerns a large range of political and military issues which have never been characteristic of the EU before. Now it is the EU which is becoming the centre of decision-making in European foreign policy, whereas the Western European Union (WEU) (as an integral part of EU), which has been inactive, is "to make and to enforce the decisions and measures of the Union in the area of defence" on the one hand, and, on the other, to be a means of consolidating the European pillar of the North Atlantic Alliance. The WEU structures are trusted with the unified security policy and the EU evolution. Concurrently, the article analyzes various positions regarding the issues of the EU and WEU integration and different versions of the development of a single unified system of European security (Finnish-Swedish, French-German and British approaches). The results of the EU intergovernmental conference of 1977 and the Amsterdam summit are considered as well. It is stressed that as an outcome of the intergovernmental conference the commanding competence of the European Council has been enhanced. The so-called Petersbourgh objectives of the WEU (humanitarian and rescue actions, peacekeeping and military actions in crisis areas, including peace establishing measures) were inserted into the European Union Treaty as well. The article concludes that the present attempts to mould a common foreign and security policy demonstrate that for the EU to realize its full influence it should be necessary to pool the analytic expertise resources, to improve the decisionmaking procedures, to present a common front in the international arena and to consolidate their international action.